Ch. 16 Rescue in the Ruins

[VirusZero]

Andraia and Raven had cleared a path through the caves and managed to make their way back outside, into the forest again. Though the weather had turned into a massive storm and lightning leaped from cloud to cloud in the sky.

In the distance was a shrine, though it was across a bridge. However jetpack pantheons had appeared and began to pepper the area with buster fire.
"That's no doubt where we have to go." Andraia stated.

However Raven was already gone with a cry of 'Anne, I'll race you'.
Andraia frowned a bit, her name was not anne. And she didn't really like it, but now was not the time to really pick a fight. Not when enemies had appeared. Raven had already taken shots at some of them to weaken them.
"Looks like I'll have to do clean up then" Andraia muttered.

She ignited her jets and took skyward to meet them. A dangerous place if there were one... With a saber in her good hand she slashed the wing of one pantheon and watched as the off-kilter enemy plummeted into the ground below, unable to control it's flight path, then exploded into the rocks.

Another enemy approached with buster hot, a shot flew by Andraia and impacted the ground below her. Andraia accelerated upwards then at the last second she pulled her knees up so that she spun backwards in a flip and, in doing so, kicked the pantheon square in the head. The impact caused the pantheon to go flying back and upwards. Though it had obviously ascended too much and a second later a bolt of lightning arced from one of the clouds and caught the pantheon in it's powerful stream. The pantheon exploded as the massive surge of energy blew through it.

Raven had already taken out a few of them, enough to clear a path... So Andraia, not wanting to spend any more time airborne (especially not given the pantheon's predicament) turned and accelerated back towards the ground. She righted her self before hitting the ground and applied a bit of counter thrust to slow herself from landing too hard. So she landed just before the shrine.

---

Stark had barely landed in the area and gotten stood up before Rai had gotten impatient and dropped down in. Rai collided with him and knocked him to the ground, he fell directly into the pool of water that still covered the floor.

Though seconds later Rai had righted himself. Stark looked up from his position on the floor and Jody was there. She helped him up as she commented on the maze like nature of the whole place.
"Yeah, this place is large and confusingly laid out." Stark replied.

"I have an idea though" Stark stated as he moved towards a wall. He raised his palm and at once a low whine echoed in the area before a burst of light erupted. His repulsor blast hit the wall and slowly he moved while the energy poured out so that he carved a mark into it. His mark was a simple lightning bolt shape. Something that wasn't likely to form naturally in the wall.
"There, now if we get turned around here we'll know because of this mark."

"However I don't think we should stick around here too much longer. Enemies are likely on our tail. So we should probably keep moving forward." Stark stated simply.